VHFcontesting
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [VHFcontesting] Multihead Xwindows

To: VHF Contesting email <VHFcontesting@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] Multihead Xwindows
From: James French <w8iss@wideopenwest.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:38:09 -0400
List-post: <vhfcontesting@contesting.com">mailto:vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Any chances of getting pictures of your setup and some more information
about what software exactly you are using for control of everything?

James W8ISS
=====
On Mon, 2009-03-16 at 11:06 -0400, John D'Ausilio wrote:
> There's probably a relatively small audience for this .. but here's
> the info anyway ;)
> 
> The power budget in the Integalactic Roving Battle Jitney has been
> under some stress since the last rebuild. The obvious place to cut
> some power was in the computer category .. we've been running a pair
> of IBM Netfinity p4 boxes, one for each op, plus a laptop for gps/nav
> up front. I started looking into ways to eliminate one of the boxes
> (and maybe a couple hundred watts of consumption).
> 
> The Jitney is linux-based, we run roverlog integrated with rotors,
> keyers and radios. I started reading up on multiseat Xwindows systems
> .. essentially running two seperate X sessions on one box, each of
> which has it's own monitor/keyboard/mouse. I accquired a
> small-form-factor dual head Nvidia graphics cards and a couple of
> serial port cards and installed them in one of the p4 boxes. No
> problem getting dual-head working, either twinview/xinerama or as
> seperate X servers.
> 
> Multihead systems are set up either as two entirely seperate X servers
> (essential if you want to use glx for gaming and such) or using the
> Xephyr nested Xserver system (no glx but works with dual-head video
> cards that don't expose two seperate pci addresses). A guy down in
> Brazil had done a bunch of work making this relatively easy .. but not
> for my nvidia card (which is one of those with only one pci address).
> I spent a week hacking around trying to make it work, and finally was
> about to give up when I ran across userful.com.  Userful is a
> commercial multiseat system for linux, but they offer free
> non-commercial 2-seat licenses to anyone who asks. And even better,
> it's in ubuntu's repositories so all I had to do was install
> "desktop-extender" and reboot and magically everything works! When it
> comes up it flashes the lights on each keyboard and prompts each seat
> to hit an F key (F1 first seat, F2 second seat, etc) and click a mouse
> button and it associates the relevant devices to the proper session.
> 
> So now I have two instances of roverlog and all the associated servers
> all running on one box .. hopefully we'll have fewer 'unrequested
> reboots' due to the voltage dipping too low too soon into a stop in
> June ;)
> 
> Some linky goodness:
> Userful: http://www.userful.com
> Multiseat summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat
> x.org multiseat wiki: 
> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/Multiseat
> MDM: http://wiki.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiseat/index.php/Mdm
> 
> de w1rt/john
> _______________________________________________
> VHFcontesting mailing list
> VHFcontesting@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
> 

_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>